


Fragments of Ziost

by InFamousHero



Series: Fragments of The Knight [3]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 20:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4406654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InFamousHero/pseuds/InFamousHero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles, detailing parts of Ziost when filtered through my interpretation of the Jedi Knight storyline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just before the final confrontation, when Vitiate was taunted.

“May the Force ever serve you…”

K’Surda swallowed the words in her throat, watching Lana turn away from her. 

Her body felt held together by string and she tried to keep her breathing even and steady, to little effect. There was a weight in her gut like pitch and pebbles. She wanted to reach out but for what?

There was nothing to grasp for in this situation, she had to keep moving forward, had to keep fighting regardless.

_Do you think it will be so **easy** , uli’kha?_

It came on too fast for her distracted mind to repel and K’Surda yelped, clutching at her head like a thousand nails assaulted her skull.

Vaguely she heard Lana’s voice and doubled over, fingers snarling into her hair as the pain grew into a searing knife edge against her thoughts. She knew this pain, like a layer of skin that prickled and burned, tugging at her insides with toxic hooks.

His voice she had no words for, she couldn’t conjure them. Physically hearing him was different to this, inside it felt inescapable and she mentally thrashed, pushing against the net that tried to close on her.

“It would seem she genuinely caught his attention.”

Scourge.

She could hear him and the hum of a lightsabre at her flank, a few steps behind her.

She knew this too well. Vitiate knew it too, he was just trying to mess with her. He was trying to stall them.

Pressure touched her arm and shoulder and she tried to focus on it, use it as an anchor. She couldn’t return to the void. She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

Something gave in like tearing sinew and the pressure faded with a derisive hiss of caustic words she knew weren’t actually there.

K’Surda blinked the momentary darkness from her eyes and lifted her head to see Lana staring at her, brow furrowed. “K’Surda?”

She swallowed thickly and tried not to pay attention to the shake in her hands, letting them fall at her sides. Her insides trembled and squirmed like eels, the slimy lick of nausea coiling up her throat. K’Surda clenched her teeth and swallowed again, her thoughts disjointed, not registering what was in front of her as the shock and fear skittered through her.

Lana’s hands tightened on her arms, a small tug to bring her to the present before she had the chance to slip into memories.

K’Surda blinked and cleared her throat, taking a deep breath. “He tried. He failed,” she muttered, her voice sounding raw in its vulnerability. She shook her head, frowning deeply. “He’s still coming.”

There was a terribly guarded look to Lana’s eyes, cutting at K’Surda for the five seconds she said nothing. A minor twitch in her expression – regret, worry, simple stress, K’Surda couldn’t know – and she let go of K’Surda’s arms. “We need to hurry.”

She ignored the sting, pushed it away somewhere deep and dark to look at later, and nodded shortly. “Right…”


	2. Effervescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final confrontation.

Suspended and numb, she felt removed from time itself, watching the colour of Vitiate’s lightsabre blur through the air. The sizzling impact against Lana’s blade nearly split her ears and K’Surda struggled to breathe, trying to stay coherent as fear threatened to strangle her into submission.

The thud of a body hitting solid metal snapped her into focus, registering the sight in front of her.

_“Go away, little sith.”_

She didn’t notice Theron run forward or the shielding dropped at her feet, her blurring vision fixating on Lana’s limp frame.

Here she was again. All this time and effort and she was back to where she began, fighting this monster, this void of  _nothing_  that once drank her in and swallowed her whole.

The feeling ebbed from her hands even as they shook and she bit back the bile in her throat, hearing his voice hissing against her mind like smoke and tar. It filled her lungs and choked her out, sapping all warmth and eating away at everything until there was nothing but him.

“Lana,” she mouthed the name more than she spoke it, her throat uncooperative.

This couldn’t happen. She couldn’t lose everything again.  _Not again._

His voice prickled her nerves, taunting her, and as she finally dragged her eyes away from Lana her vision turned red. “Enough,” she muttered.

Vitiate twisted his puppet’s mouth into a smile. “Ah, the failure  _does_  speak…”

Her heart hammered, burning in the cold of her chest and K’Surda drew her sabres, igniting with the flood of rage permeating her body. “Enough!” her voice exploded out of her, alien to her ears in its fury.

Hollow laughter was all the concern he gave, for all the pain caused, for all the nightmares, the humiliations, the bonds broken and lost forever. Every mistake made, every shred of regret and guilt and grief, all of it nothing to him.

The destruction of her life meant  _nothing_.

K’Surda launched at him, disregarding Scourge yelling at her ‘foolishness’ for charging straight on, and their blades met with enough strength to make Vitiate’s puppet shift back a step.  _Still_  he laughed, scathing, cutting at her with every mocking shudder of breath, and she screamed in response, tearing at him with both her blades and the Force.

She refused to give him space, a second’s opening, he deserved  _nothing_  of mercy and she had long since lost the capacity to feel any for him.

Braga was too proud and naïve, thinking something such as this  _creature_ could ever be redeemed. They all paid for his arrogance. She was  _continuing_ to pay for it, again and again, living with the scars inside and out regardless of if she needed a moment to breathe.

She would never get one.

_So why should he?_


	3. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Immediately after the fight with Vitiate.

Aches permeated her frame but that wasn’t what caught her attention as she came to, mildly surprised she was doing so in the first place. Someone was screaming, not even saying anything coherent, just  _howling_  like a wounded thing.

Lana turned her eyes away from Scourge, knelt at her side, to spot K’Surda standing out on the platform. The knight bore the marks of her fight with Vitiate, her armour scorched or cut, but nothing serious enough to keep her from standing. Her entire frame was tense, hands balled into fists tight enough to leave her trembling. She all but radiated anger and fear, soured further by grief, like a dozen leaks had sprung at once.

Waving off Scourge, Lana pushed to her feet and moved towards K’Surda, trying to brush the realization away from her active thoughts. She knew exactly why K’Surda was reacting like this but could she afford sympathy? This was momentary, a blink, and they would part ways for who knew how long again.

Surro muttered something she didn’t hear and K’Surda made a frustrated, guttural noise, clutching her head.

“Shut up!” she yelled, voice cracking with fear.

Lana swallowed the swell of emotion in her throat and frowned, reaching out for the Knight.

“K’Surda,” she spoke calmly, trying to be gentle, trying  _not_  to startle the Knight any further.

K’Surda all but jumped, twisting around sharply. Her eyes were wide and painfully wet, a wild mix of negatives making them hard to meet. It was like looking at the eyes of a frightened animal and it cut her more than she wished to think about.

With her throat constricting, Lana carefully touched her fingertips to K’Surda’s arm and when the Knight did not move she pressed her palm to it. “He isn’t here, not now,” she murmured.

K’Surda stared at her for a few seconds of silence, breath shaky, hands still braced against her skull like she was afraid it was about to split, before she blinked and her eyes seemed to focus properly for just a second. She looked away and let her arms go lax, half-turning only for her feet to seemingly give up on walking. She slumped into a loose sitting position on the floor, curled slightly with her head in her hands once again.

It was if someone had thrown water on the fire and K’Surda no longer felt like a sizzling brand against her senses. It was something.

Movement in the corner of her eye turned her head, nodding to Theron and Scourge as they approached. Theron frowned quizzically at K’Surda and opened his mouth, but Lana lifted her hand, making him pause and look at her. She shook her head, only earning another puzzled look in response. He didn’t know, K’Surda never did open up to him about it, how well she knew what was going on here and Lana wasn’t about to do it for her.

“I saw it, I saw everything, every life… every life he took,” Surro muttered at their feet, eyes wide and glassy. “ _I_  took,” she said bitterly, voice fractured by grief. “It’s all I can see anymore… I’m a  _monster_.”

An ill feeling coiled in her stomach and Lana pushed it down, trying not to make connections between Surro and K’Surda.

“That’s not true,” Theron said gently, kneeling to try and meet Surro’s eyes. “You’ll be okay, we’ll take you to Tython, the Jedi will help you restore your mind and make you whole again.”

Lana swallowed her discomfort. “And then she’ll be no good to us.”

Theron scowled, turning his head to look at her, and she continued before he could interrupt with conjecture. “We  _need_  to understand the connection Vitiate established with this Jedi so we can stop it or exploit it.”

His mouth twisted with displeasure. “Let me guess, the process is invasive. Hasn’t she been through enough?” He got to his feet, turning to face her so he stood between her and Surro, quite deliberately.

Frustration plucked at her insides. “We’ve bought ourselves some time, that’s all. We can’t risk the fate of the galaxy just to assuage your guilt.”

Theron’s scowl deepened, his voice turning hard with restrained anger. “You want to take her brain apart and you don’t even know if you’ll find anything.” His eyes flicked to K’Surda, still questioning, perhaps wondering why she wasn’t speaking up. There was something calculating to his eyes that worsened the ill coil in Lana’s gut. K’Surda wouldn’t want him to know, but he was clever and it was too obvious now.

She opened her mouth to speak but Theron scoffed. “I knew I should have said something,” he muttered.

Lana frowned. “What?”

He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “But you know I figured it wasn’t my place, she’s an adult, we’ve all made mistakes,” he said, shrugging and fixing her with a glare. “She’s been through this as well, hasn’t she?”

The words stuck in Lana’s throat like hooks, registering what he was saying alongside the question, and her pause made his voice harden with derision. “And you’re still gonna suggest this.”

How could he not see? One person’s life, their mind, for a weakness in their enemy, an enemy who threatened all life in the galaxy, and he was going to let his guilt jeopardize that? If there was even a  _chance_  of finding something they could use against Vitiate…

Lana clasped her hands behind her back and levelled her gaze at Theron, ignoring the look his face. “We have to try. Sentimentality will not matter if he wins.”

His mouth pulled into a thin, down-turned line. “Yeah, I’m sure K’Surda appreciates that logic.”

The sting was enough to make the corners of her mouth twitch. Lana wanted to believe she knew K’Surda well enough, but doubt wormed its way into her regardless.

Finally, the Knight in question spoke. “Enough.”

Theron crossed his arms and Lana held her breath as K’Surda slowly got to her feet, eyes fixed on Surro who continued to mutter quietly to herself on the ground. Exhaustion permeated every part of her and her brow furrowed in a look Lana could not read clearly, orange eyes all but smouldering like embers.

When she didn’t speak, Theron took it upon himself to decide. “Guess we’re taking her to Tython then,” he said scathingly. He half-turned only for K’Surda to speak again, her voice hard and cold. “No.”

Lana couldn’t help her brow rising and Theron nearly snapped his neck looking at her, surprise clear on his face. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

K’Surda stared at Surro a few moments longer and rubbed at her face, only looking more resigned for her effort. “Do what you have to, Lana,” she muttered.

Theron sputtered as if K’Surda just punched him in the stomach. “What? You’ve got to be kidding me! How can you-? Don’t you-?” he struggled to find words and grit his teeth, glaring at the knight’s back as if that would force her to respond and explain herself. When she said nothing he continued, trying to keep his voice measured and under control. “Look, I know we might get some sort of reprieve out of this, and I know that you…” he grit his teeth again, hands clenching.

Still, she refused to say anything and Theron shook his head. “You know what? I can’t. I can’t talk to you right now,” he growled and turned away, stalking back into the building without another word or pause to see if K’Surda would say something. She didn’t even turn her head, she just continued to watch Surro as if the suffering Jedi were a mirror.

There was little time left to act but regret and sympathy tugged at Lana, trying to make her sluggish and reluctant to leave. “K’Surda,” she started.

The Knight’s head turned towards her. “They shouldn’t have let me leave,” she said quietly, her visible eye not looking at Lana but rather just staring off into nothing, unfocused. “But I was their best weapon against Vitiate, I had the experience and the right ally, and there was no time to be soft. He’d exploit that, it’s just something to needle for him.”

Lana took a breath and tried to steady herself, tried to keep her thoughts ordered and fixed on what she was meant to be doing. But she remained quiet and allowed K’Surda to keep talking, it was the least she could do short of actually reaching out to the Knight.

K’Surda shook her head and looked back at Surro. “I should have died the first time, but he kept me alive. I should have died the second time, but I ran away. Now I’m… still here. This can’t keep happening, I can’t  _keep_  fighting him. I’m not going to get away every time…” she stalled to swallow, voice strained.

Rubbing at her face, K’Surda finally turned around and looked directly at Lana, her eyes a little more focused. “If you can’t find anything worthwhile,” she said soberly, “please, end it quickly.”

There were too many intricacies waiting to strangle the words from her throat if she paused and thought it over more than she needed to. Lana bowed her head in thanks and turned to help Surro to her feet. “I will do what I can,” she said as evenly as she could.

Part of her was thankful that K’Surda did not walk away with her; it meant she could focus again.

There was so little space for sentiment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally I just felt like there should have been more nods to the fact that the Jedi Knight was once Vitiate's mind slave themselves, as there could have been really good opportunities to fuck with the Knight on that level. Besides the Sith Warrior, they're the only other one who has had the most direct and uncomfortably intimate interactions with Vitiate before SoR/RotE, so its a shame that wasn't really brought up.


	4. Guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after the final fight on Ziost but before you leave, you know, when Vitiate shows up to be a taunting dick.

_“Indeed, what good are you?”_

His voice shot cold, nauseous tremors through her body, ringing in her ears as he continued to talk with words built to taunt and cut beneath her skin. He _knew_ her after all, knew how to stab, pick and tear until she was a bleeding, whimpering wreck.

Of course he wanted her alive, for now. Where was the fun of tormenting her if she was dead?

_“Do you rail against me because you feel it is your **duty**? To what end? The Order’s approval? Am I your ‘great darkness’ to slay and absolve you of all your wrongs?”_

“Shut up!” K’Surda barked her words, discomfort coiling tight in her belly. She clenched her hands, resisting the urge to check the shadows for him. She wouldn’t find him.

She bared her teeth. “I never wanted to be like this! You made me into a monster!”

Deep, malevolent laughter rumbled out of the shadows and reverberated through her like her bones were suddenly hollow. _“You think I don’t **know** you, child?”_ His voice cowed her spine and she swallowed hard, trying to control herself. She was growing short of breath, twitching at the mere hint of pressure on her mind.

The shadows pressed in around her as Vitiate’s laughter tapered into a low chuckle. _“I can feel the memories burning inside you. Your fortitude is amusing, but I knew you would not scurry away from them.”_

His voice moved to her left, so sudden and _present_ that she flinched and whirled to face nothing. _“Do you really think anything is going to cleanse that taint? That even **you** can find redemption?”_

It moved behind her and she stumbled away from it, lightning crackling along her arms as she turned and fired at _nothing._

Vitiate laughed again. _“You denied it to others, cut down defenceless targets and turned your own kind. You **doomed** an entire planet for raw power.”_

Her breathes were coming shallow now. She tried to growl at him, regain her nerve and stand with her back straight again. “To stop you!”

That horrendous voice hissed against her ear. _“A hollow justification, don’t you think?”_

K’Surda flinched and curled her arms around her head, fingers digging against her skull. “Get out!” she yelled, her voice cracking.

He withdrew, filling the room with his voice again. _“Your interference has amounted to what, exactly? What have you **done** to successfully stop me?”_

Nothing.

Not even _this_ had done anything meaningful.

K’Surda screwed her eyes shut.

Vitiate scoffed in amusement and his voice began to slowly fade. _“When I am finished here, when **every** life on this world has been exhausted, I want you to be alive to know that I succeeded on **your** ‘watch’ yet again. Goodbye.”_

The unnatural shadows lifted and she fell to her knees, cold, sick and shaking. She curled over onto her hands and heaved, barely even feeling the burn against her throat.

Roughly she wiped her mouth with the back of her glove and staggered upright, choking her sobs into submission.

She couldn’t leave this place fast enough…


	5. Failures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Ziost, K’Surda is left with old wounds refreshed and her mind rattled. Speaking to allies should ease this pain, but with the fate of Master Surro weighing on him, Theron is hard pressed to be kind and K’Surda has had enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was done very recently, well after the original drabbles I did RE what happened on Ziost, and it fits the timeline so it gets added on here.

“Understood. Thank you.”

Satele’s holographic figure flickered out of sight as she walked in, feeling numb from the inside out and finding it hard to fixate on any one thing. Scourge was off somewhere, something about needing to consider recent events, and all she could think to do was answer Theron’s call to meet with him.

She could still feel it, the stripping away of her insides like paint from rapidly corroding metal, and the image refused to leave her mind.

_“Am I your ‘great darkness’ to slay and absolve you of all your wrongs?”_

K’Surda shook her head, trying to keep his voice at bay. He wasn’t here. She clenched her hands tight and swallowed thickly, forcing herself to breathe deep. He _wasn’t_ here.

“What was that about?” She forced herself to speak, trying to meet Theron’s gaze as he turned around but her eyes flicked across the red of his jacket, the white, and the colours blurred together. She blinked and met his eyes again.

The line of his mouth tightened and he propped his hands on his hips. “I asked Master Satele and others to reach out with the Force, try to see if Master Surro’s all right. Nothing.” He frowned, leaving a few seconds pause as he stared at her. “She was the Emperor’s ‘favourite,’ I get that, but I want to believe we could have done something—anything.”

Cold rattling like her bones were hollow, her limbs moved on strings, mechanical, unfeeling, and her hands turned red with the screams that followed.

K’Surda jolted and looked away from Theron, swallowing again. “He has a lot of favourites,” she mumbled.

She wrung her hands and forced herself to look at him again, only to find he was studying her, trying to figure something out just by looking. It wasn’t working, judging from his deepened frown.

K’Surda scowled and resisted crossing her arms. “What?”

He sighed and looked at the floor, shaking his head. “Trying to understand something,” he said, looking at her a second later. “Why’d you do it? How could you just hand her over to Lana?”

Heat flared to life in her belly and K’Surda grit her teeth, trying desperately to curb the sudden spike of anger. “There’s no space for softness when it comes to him,” she muttered, avoiding Theron’s eyes.

Confusion dominated Theron’s face. “Just thought you’d have a little more compassion, knowing what she’s been through so well.”

She looked directly at him and the heat flooded her body. K’Surda had no idea how she looked right then and there but Theron tensed, his jaw tightened. He almost looked _wary_. “You have no idea,” she said coldly.

Theron lifted his hands in placation. “It just doesn’t make sense to me. You went through the same thing but you don’t-”

K’Surda snarled and clenched her hands, the chamber shaking slightly. Theron looked around as the lights flickered and when he returned his attention to her the wariness was much easier to see. “You don’t understand one kriffing thing about what I went through _or_ what she went through! It’s your fault she was even there, she didn’t need to be; none of you did!”

Theron opened his mouth to protest, defensiveness and anger knotting his brow. “Shut up!” K’Surda was yelling before she knew it. “None of them had to suffer like that! _None of them_! _You_ took them there! You took them to Imperial space, to an Imperial world where you had no _business_ being!”

She was shaking, her hands clenched tight enough to hurt. “Because somehow you think this is an enemy _you_ can deal with, somehow you think you know _how_ to deal with him! You didn’t even contact me first to check or ask or _anything_ , you only did it after ‘your’ jedi were lost!”

Theron lifted his hands again. “I should have reached out to sooner—that’s on me. I know I’ve made mistakes, but-”

A stinging wetness welled in her eyes and K’Surda ignored it. “But _nothing_ —there’s nothing you can say! I went through enough of this with the Order, your _mother_ , and now you, all of you thinking you understand when you don’t! There’s no _room_ for being sentimental or soft, he wants to consume us, _all of us_ , but when I try to meet that head on? When I try to deal with this _monster_ you and your mother as so happy to just _throw_ people at? _I’m_ the monster then, _I’m_ the one you look at with disappointment and contempt only to turn right around and ask me to deal with it _yet again_!”

It was so easy for them to just keep pushing, to berate and question and act like nothing should be wrong. They never understood. None of them _ever_ understood and how could they? Vitiate didn’t take their minds from them. So it was easy. It was so easy to push and wonder why she had to be such a mess.

She hated this, like so many moments before it, and no small amount of that hatred was directed at herself. That she was like this to begin with, that she couldn’t shake it off, that she couldn’t just be the perfect, impervious knight everyone but Lana expected her to be.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was just broken and unfit, ill-suited for the task. They should have chosen someone else. They should have never allowed her to go on that mission. She was only ever going to fail, not that it stopped the Order from sending her out again.

Part of her wondered if they wanted her to come back, if they hoped she would die with him on Dromund Kaas and save them the shame of acknowledging her failures. Maybe it was why Satele insisted on sending her away, to find avenues to ‘prove’ herself in the war against the Empire. As if that would ever be a possibility for redemption.

She was a terrible jedi. She’d shown that all too well these last months.

What was she even fighting for beyond oblivion with that monster?

Theron’s voice cut through the white noise in her ears. “-whatever my ‘mother’ has to do with this. I shouldn’t even be here, talking to you. Saresh and Master Satele agree with you, they weren’t all that excited to find out I had a team of black-ops Jedi on call without their knowledge. I’m on administrative leave—indefinitely.”

K’Surda scoffed. “If it was up to me you’d be out, _definitely._ ”

The twitch in Theron’s expression lent to his frustrated posture and he propped his hands on his hips again, scowling. “All we’ve been through and it’s that easy?”

The words slipped out of her throat in a growl. “You misjudged Darok, you misjudged Lana, misjudged Kovach and then there’s _this_ mess. You failed from start to finish and now you want to judge _me_? Yes, it _is_ that easy.”

Theron shook his head, mouth twisting up with anger. “You talk about no one understanding but you don’t know a damn thing,” he said tersely, looking away. “Just as well, I guess, being born without the force and all that? I’d hate to turn into someone like you.”

She didn’t hear it if he spoke again. He walked by her, out of sight, and all the feeling drained from her body until she fell to her knees.

At some point they wouldn’t be able to push anymore and all K’Surda could think was what they would say she could have done better.


End file.
